Restorative Justice Advisory Board Meeting Minutes

September 11, 2008

In attendance: Jim Schroeter – MCDSS, Tom Buttner – Retired MCDSS, Laurie Yarie – Justice Programs, Shelly Smith-Payant – Wausau School District, Tamera Hansen & Jamie Henrichs – Marathon County DA’s Office, Lisa Krause – Greenheck Fan Corporation, Lou Plaisance – Retired, Mike Stouffer - Volunteer, Adam Stouffer – Allied Health, Dan Kohn – Greater Wausau Christian Services, Carrie Vergin & Paula Schultz – MCRJP.

Introductions took place and the minutes of the May 8, 2008 board meeting were reviewed.

Carrie Vergin then updated the board members on the completion of our website, now available at www.mcrjp.org. Carrie explained that she contributed her portion of the funds provided by the State and Local Bar Association, to the Youth Restitution Project. She received approximately $1,500.00 for the time she spent on developing the information included on the site. The balance of the funds received, were used to pay our web-master, Jim Prozinski. Thanks for your help Jim!

Carrie presented the current case count (93 teens) and gave an update on the budget. She states that the budget was put together for 2009 and forwarded to MCDSS and the County Administrator. We are awaiting approval and should know something by our next meeting date.

We received an update from the DA’s office:  Jamie Henrichs stated that she recently referred three cases to Restorative Justice for the Youth Educational Shoplifting Prevention Program (YES). Tamera Hansen stated she received a call from another county, looking to start a teen or peer court program. She asked the board members to contact her if they had any information to pass along. Tamera was given Nissa’s name/Boys & Girls Club. Also passed along, was the web-site for Barron County, which also has a Teen Court. Tamera announced an upcoming Restorative Justice Training Conference located in Milwaukee, WI, October 15 – 16, for anyone who was interested. Tamera also explained that she has limited connections in the community and would like us to contact her if we know of interested members who would be willing to participate in community conferencing.

Tom Buttner then presented his idea of what a Marathon County Community Restorative Justice Cooperative might look like and represent. Tom shared that he is concerned about the philosophical approaches of service agencies promoting programs and putting the label of “restorative” on them. He cautioned that we need support of this from an evidence-based prospective. Tom felt that if such a cooperative were formed, we would also need to support the preventative aspect. Tom indicated that for the most part, we need to look to the community in order to make this happen. We would need to have community members’ involvement in restorative practices. Tom believes funding could be more easily accessed if we could show that these practices work (i.e. stats, evidence based data). The board was then left open for discussion.

Dan Kohn stated that he appreciated the preventative aspect of this new idea. He asked if there were any prototypes that we could investigate, to determine what works. Barron County was noted. He also asked what the cost would be and where funding would come from. He said we needed be able to prove why this initiative would be the one to go with, when there are others already. Jamie Henrichs said she felt it was a good idea to incorporate restorative practices into the schools at an early grade level. She suggested presenting this to the PTO groups and asking for their participation. Dan Kohn suggested the use of the media for exposure. Shelly Payant felt that the schools would be accepting of this, but added that we needed to be able to share with them how it would fit in with the other initiatives already begun in the school system (i.e. Tribes, peer mediation, etc). Shelly suggested looking into mini grants through the districts in order to fund a pilot program.  

Carrie wrapped up the meeting by asking members to e-mail any other thoughts on this topic.

The next meeting date was scheduled for Thursday, November 13, 2008.